When you can’t

For the second time this year, I can’t.

I can’t hoist a two year-old onto my hip and scale the stairs.

I can’t stand at the stove and make dinner.

I can’t get down in the floor and stack Lincoln Logs.

I can’t throw clothes into the washer.

I can’t lift my baby.

For a mother–any mother– this is the stuff that cuts our knees out from under us. We do. We bend and carry and get stuff done. We make things: food, clothes, beds. We are part of the furniture of childhood: arms that soothe, legs that serve as hiding spots during games of hide and seek, laps that are part trampoline, part home base. We move through our days mostly oblivious to what we are accomplishing, seeing only the next item on the to-do list, unaware of the motions of our bodies as we work out the desires of our hearts.

When you can't | To Sow a Seed

 

And then … we can’t.

We can’t move fast enough to save the preschooler from the topple off the chair. We can’t bake the batch of cupcakes the 12 year-old needs to bring to the party Saturday night. We can’t mop the milk off the floor, or bear the weight of the nursing babe on our chest.

And it just destroys us, because … we’re moms. If we can’t do, well, what are we?

But then there is this: a steady stream of hands providing exactly what is needed. Preparing meals for the family. Comforting a teething baby. Pushing a vacuum across the floor. Helping a child get dressed. Driving the van. All of it.

These helping hands, they can never replace a mother. But until she is whole, until she is capable of once again filling her role completely, they are God’s provision. They are the allowance that keeps the ship afloat in the center of a storm that is less the lashings of wind and rain and more the quiet, almost invisible lack that is a mother removed from the small, essential duty of being the glue in a household.

In this season, my husband, my older boys, my in-laws, my church family, even my best friend from across the country, have been the hands that have borne the weight of my can’t. Once again, I am humbled and awed as I am served, as my family is loved, as the needs are met. Because when you can’t, you are keenly aware of the tiny details that make up your days, and the distribution of those duties make you see how loved you are. From diapers changed to homemade bread on your table, you are blessed.

And grateful. Overwhelmingly, awesomely grateful.

 

One thought on “When you can’t

  1. I feel you! I broke my ankle a few years ago when I had a newly-2-year-old and an infant. Sounds like you have great perspective. Hang in there! And yay for support!

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